The Saint and the Sinner by Barbara Cartland

goes to a certain gentleman’s bedroom when he wants her, her whole family will be turned into the street – every one of them!”
    Pandora’s voice was vibrant with anger, and after a moment the Earl said,
    “Can this really be the truth?”
    “But of course it is the truth!” Pandora answered. “And while I am not concerned with your friends, these people are mine – the people whom Papa loved and looked after, the people who came to my mother with their problems.”
    Tears welled up in her eyes as she spoke of her mother, but her voice was still angry as she continued,
    “Mrs. Meadowfield, who looked after the girls who worked here, has been sent away, and this wicked harridan has been put in her place. I remember you said last night that it was nothing to do with you that Burrows, the former Butler, had gone.”
    She looked at the Earl as if she expected him to contradict her, then went on,
    “Burrows protested because he felt he was one of the family. Count the snuff-boxes now and see how many are missing! The money had gone into your new butler’s pocket, just as Grandpapa’s best wines have flowed down the new butler’s throat!”
    Pandora paused for breath, then went on,
    “I did not believe, could not credit, that the things I had heard about you were true. But they are true! And they are happening at Chart Hall, which is a part of you whether you admit it or not.”
    Her voice broke as she asked,
    “How can you do this? How can you be so cruel – so insensitive as to – destroy what those of our blood have – died to – preserve?”
    Now the tears ran down Pandora’s cheeks. She took no heed of them, but merely went on staring at the Earl, the anger still in her eyes, which were so like his.
    For a moment he neither moved nor spoke. Then he said in a voice that seemed somehow as tense as hers,
    “You have spoken bluntly, Pandora, and I have listened to your accusations. Now perhaps you would like to hear my side of the story.”
    She did not answer, and he went on,
    “Ever since I inherited I have done my best to disgrace the name of Chartwood, and I intend to dissipate or disperse everything this house contains, as I have already begun on the contents of Chartwood House in London.”
    “But why? Why?” Pandora cried.
    “That is what you shall hear,” the Earl answered.
    He rose to his feet as he spoke, as if it would thus be easier to confront her, and said in a hard voice,
    “My father, as you know, was a distant cousin of your grandfather’s, and when he was a young man he fell in love with a very beautiful woman. She was ostracised by every member of the Chart family because they called her a ‘play-actress.’”
    Pandora looked surprised and the Earl went on,
    “She was in fact nothing of the sort. She had great musical ability, and because her parents were poverty-stricken she employed the only talent she had to make a living.”
    He paused to continue angrily,
    “She certainly appeared on the stage, and people paid to hear her, and that damned her completely in the eyes of the stuck-up aristocrats.”
    The Earl walked a few paces across the room and back again, and as Pandora did not speak after a moment he went on,
    “My father, shunned by his family, made friends where he could. They were not particularly desirable but at least they amused him while he had money, but he did not have much.”
    The Earl’s voice was bitter and cynical as he continued,
    “Then my mother died and he fell ill and nobody wanted him. Least of all the Earl of Chartwood, who, according to you, should have protected the weaker and poorer members of the family.”
    “What – happened?” Pandora asked.
    “My father died,” the Earl replied, “because I could not raise enough money for him to have an operation which was imperative if he were to live.”
    “Did you ask Grandpapa to help you?”
    “Of course I asked the Almighty Earl of Chartwood – the head of the family – the great father